Kuching

We again lucked out with our hotel again. This time the Pullman, up on the hill in Kuching. Only $75 a night and we have a fantastic deluxe room,  including breakfast and with wonderful views of the mountains. We are in room 1617 for the record (or our next visit).

Our bedroom view- spectacular!

Really trying to absorb the view

Kuching is a lovely little town and quite walkable. It was raining heavily when we arrived at 6pm on our first day. We were hungry and wanting a really good meal. I looked up an Indian restaurant on trip advisor and we headed off to Lyns Indian restaurant, which was rated quite highly. It was awful - horrid food, and horrid atmosphere - we have decided that Trip Advisor is not very useful for restaurant  leads - I think other peoples' taste is too subjective!

We finally forced ourselves to explore - and spent our second day wandering around the city. We spent quite a bit of time at the Waterfront, visited the Chinese History Museum, The Cat Statue (well you have to don't you?) and had a 1 1/2 hour $13 foot massage - cant beat that! Although we did have to try a couple of places until we found one we liked. Most of the massage places have Chinese girls - very professional but with no love and lots of chat! (im sure they were talking about us :-0).

Sarawak Assembly building.

I discovered a great food blog www.thanislim.com
written by an ex Kuching chef, who now resides in NZ. Fantastic guide to all the food stalls and restaurants in Kuching. From this we went to Blah Bla Bla for dinner . Delicious and the bottle of Chilean red helped!

Dinner at Bla bla bla

I have to admit, it is now about five days since we left Kuching. Richard says my heart isn't in this blog and I have to admit he is right, but onwards and upwards... it will still be a good record of our visit, if not that entertaining.

Kuching the city of cats

We spent quite a bit of time on the waterfront, great people watching in the month of Ramadan. Also found a fantastic cake shop in a converted court house - complete with home made artwork - that was worth two visits.

My what an uncanny likeness!

CAKIES!!!

We did undertake the thanislim.com tour of Kuching, with varying success. The first place we located (from the rather unclear directions, was Toms Cafe and Bakery). The cakes were suitably fabulous and it looked like a good place for dinner on a later visit. 

Starting our food tour with desert - well just because we can!

The next stop on the tour was Sin Hian Chia Emporium for some famous Sarawak pepper sweets. The girl in the shop was really sweet, so we ended up buying a bunch of stuff for our neighbour Anna (as its a while since she last visited Kuching).

Hmm what to buy?

I had wanted to visit Johns Pie shop, for a laksa pie, but after walking up and down the street it was supposed to be located on, and getting somewhat hot and bothered, we discovered it had moved out of Kuching centre. 

Aladins Fried Chicken Emporium

So we moved onto the other side of town and managed to locate Aladins - the best chicken rice and fried chicken shop in Kuching. It was a bit of a rough and ready kind of joint and they looked a bit surprised we were there, but it was delicious. 

It's ours, all ours!

We spent our final day, doing a bit of washing, at the local laundry mat - well it has to be done. The afternoon we spent in the Pullmans' very delightful pool, which we mostly had to ourselves. For our last evening, we had a second visit to the cakies shop (cafe C) and Aladins' best chicken and hung around the waterfront.

Watching the pants go round.

We really enjoyed Kuching, its definitely worth another visit. 

Local mosque Kuching

Kota Kinabalu

Kota is a cute little place, the flight in gave us a very pretty overview of the beaches and the flight comes in low over the water, like Bali used to. 

Pool at Ming Garden Hotel

We booked 5 nights at the Ming Gardens Hotel, on the club floor. The hotel is quite nice, a bit too many mainland  Chinese tourists (cultural clash = shouting, gobbing in the pool and banging the door in your face, oh and extreme selfie taking) but the staff are sweet and the room is lovely.

KK Pier, but we didn't end up doing a boat ride...

I had another dreaded cold, from the drenching in Kuala Lumpur. This is becoming a bit of a bad habit, as I had a bad cold on our last couple of holidays...hmm.

Anyway onwards and upwards.

Down town KK, the weather was pretty much overcast like this, during our stay. 

We arrived at the hotel in the early  afternoon and didn't leave the hotel for the first day, thought we'd maximise use of the Club Lounge. We spent a pleasant morning wandering around the small city area and waterfront and the afternoon lazing by the pool. The evening saw us back in the Club Lounge (of course) and later, dinner at the waterfront. Atmosphere was good but food was average. Still there was a lot of live music to be enjoyed. 

The scene of the crime(s) OUR table at the club lounge, Ming Garden Hotel. 

We've been toying with the idea of where to go next and decided on a brief stop to Kuching before we head off for our half yearly R&R at Lombok.

We ended up spending a lovely, although very laze five days in KK.  I blame the club floor and my cold for our extreme inactivity - although it's really just the way the Ajayis' roll - sometimes we need a vacation from our vacation. 

Back at the KK Waterfront, for some banging tunes.

We really enjoyed the Ming Garden and made the most of our stay in the hotel. Once we even ventured into the night club, but again it wasn't as groovy as it looked and it was full of fag smoke!

We also managed to shop up a bit of a storm at the newest shopping mall, KK Times Square. Richie got some new glad rags, we had a pretty good massage and a few cold beers. 

Groovy Baby!

after a big night out...

View from our hotel room

Feeling rested, rejuvenated and recovered from my cold, we headed off to Kuching. Although we didn't do very much in KK, it was a great break, the hotel was fabulous and excellent value. We pretty much lived in the Club Floor (which we mostly had to ourselves) and ended up only going out for dinner twice, both times to the waterfront. 

We also used Uber in KK, it was great, ridiculously cheap but also a great opportunity to chat to the (mostly young & all male) drivers. 

We're leaving on a jet plane - off to Kuching.

Following our tastebuds

We couldn't wait another day, so we headed off to Bangsar to dine at our favourite Indian restaurant, Nirvana. It didn't disappoint - although we had to queue this time, so it's obviously lost none of its popularity.

Must remember not to order the biryani next time - the portions are so huge - better to go with the plain rice. I'd love to go there for breakfast but a) the Ajayi's would never get up early enough and b) we just can't eat enough at breakfast, to do it justice.

Nirvana - or heaven - it's fabulous either way

After stuffing ourselves full of delicious ($11 a head) curry we took a long slow walk around Bangsar. So far, the weather has been really kind, warm and a bit rainy.

We caught the train back to Sentral and then the mono rail back to Bukit and headed off to the Thai Odysey for a massage. However, we saw a new massage place had opened up on the ground floor. Oh wow - it was sensational - hurt like buggary, my back cracked like a bag of popcorn but we felt fantastic afterwards.

riding the monorail

We'd planned to go to the Luna Bar, after a rest at home but the rest turned into another early night (not as young as we think we are).

Saturday, was still all about the food.... We had a long lazy morning (let's be honest, we have long lazy mornings everyday, it's 0930 on a Sunday as I write this and yes, we are still in bed) and then headed out for brunch at Acme Bar and Coffee at the Troika building. 

Brunch at Acme Bar and Coffee meep meep!

We took a long cut through the park, got quite lost, but found the Trader Hotel enroute and eventually got to Acme at 12noon. Brunch was all very 'Melbourme' - I had avocado and poached eggs and Richie had a fry up  - it was nice but not hot enough - the 2" inch high toast was pretty fab though.

After brunch, we spent quite a bit of time sitting by the water feature, watching the fountains and the people. We were going shopping in Jalan Alor, but feeling hot and lazy and in need of air conditioning we chose to head back into KLCC and find the Galleria Petronas. It was a good decision as they had a small photography exhibition about Yves Saint Laurent as well as some Malaysian artist. 

Following our mini dose of culture, we decided to head back to the  Traders Hotel and visit the Sky Bar, as it would be quieter during the day. It was a weird experience, the view is fantastic, but the bloody great big pool in the middle of the bar just doesn't work for me!

Gorgeous view from the Sky Bar and the scenery isn't bad either.

In the evening, we headed out to the Publika Square for a French football festival, that I'd read about in the KL Time Out. Publika is a huge area of shops and restaurants in Solaris Dutamas, about 15 minute drive from KLCC. Apparently it's quite an expensive are, and there did seem to be quite a few expats.  We lucked out on a fantastic table with a view of the stage but far enough from the general mellee. The food was really great (Richie had noodles and I has nasi lemak). 

Dinner at Publika, great table, great evening was had by all.

We complimented this with a lovely bottle of Chilean white - delicious. The evening was a great opportunity for people watching - it was a mixture of music, aerial acrobatic display, school girls demonstrating football skills and some weird competition with tickets (you can imagine which was Richie's favourite).

After such a big Saturday, Sunday was a much slower day. We had brunch at the food hall in the Pavilion - I luuuurve this food hall.

We shared a bowl of noodles and curry sauce from my favourite do it yourself noodle stall and I greedily finished this off with an ABC Ice Kachang - and it didn't disappoint - I've had Ice Kachang in Singapore, Malaysia and Korea and they were all fabulous - could be a coffee table book in the making?

Pavillion Shopping Centre food hall, food heaven.

We wandered over to the Berjaya Time Square shopping centre to purchase Richies' favourite popcorn and then headed back to our new favourite massage place - heavenly again. It was pouring with rain, really massive downpour when we came out of the shopping centre, so we had planned to catch the monorail back home and then head out to Jalan Alor and the Luna Bar - best laid plans and all that - it never stopped raining - so we ended up staying in and having vodka tonics and cakies and an early night.


We continued the slow theme on Monday with a return trip to Nirvana in Bangsar, still delicious, to enjoy our last curry (for this trip at least). Finally made our way to Luna Bar, but it was pretty disappointing -  dominated again by a HUGE pool, pretty run down and full of screaming kids (okay there were only a handful of kids but they made enough noise). 

x

Luna Roof top bar....bit meh, but good views.

We headed out to Jalan Alor for dinner, was pleasant, still crowded, still touristy, food was alright - nothing to write home about but not bad. 

Jalan Alor, touristy but tasty!

Tuesday saw us up at the crack of dawn (she was not pleased) and off to KK. We used the services of the lovely Natasha again, although I slept most of the drive to the airport. We both slept most of the way to KK.

Back to the future

Here we are again back in our favourite apartment, Parkview, in Kuala Lumpur. Two years have passed since our last visit and even though it's a bit cliched - it really doesn't seem that long ago.

We had an action packed first day - up at 03.30 (ouch) ; Air Asia left on time (for a change) and it was a 3/4/3 seat plane and we had a spare seat between us - luxury.

First beer of the holiday - extra nice!

We'd organised an Uber driver through our apartment booking - so we had an enjoyable ride into the city with a lovely young lady - instead of the usual crotchety old taxi drivers. 

Never get tired of that view

Our apartment is exactly the same - I always find a sense of comfort in returning to the same accomodation. We were both quite tired and really hungry so we settle for lunch at KLCC - was pretty good and then we wandered over to The Pavillion - still retracing old steps- we stocked up on cakies from Lavenders cake shop, had an expensive but enjoyable drink at the pub area and stocked up at the supermarket. 

Came home, had several large vodkas, a swim in the pool, talked a bit of bollocks and it was lights out by 10pm!

I'm not holding in my stomach, honestly!